“It is important to re-evaluate Ukraine as a territory of freedom and patronage, a defender of minorities”— Oles Kulchynsky

We are talking about the South of Ukraine, the intersection of cultures and civilizations. Our guest on today’s show is the Orientalist and translator Oles Kulchynsky. Oles Kulchynsky: The Black Sea Lowland [Prychornomoria] is an...

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People do not want to remember because they are afraid of finding out something that is incompatible with their self-image—Sofia Andrukhovych

On the Encounters program, we are continuing our conversation with the writer, translator, and journalist Sofia Andrukhovych about her novel Amadoka. We discuss how to distinguish valuable documents in archives from trash, the history of...

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The idea for the novel Amadoka sprang from an interest in Viktor Petrov and the persecution and destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the 1930s—Sofia Andrukhovych

The title of the book, Amadoka, is derived from the name of the largest lake in Europe, situated on the territory of contemporary Ukraine. The novel is not about the lake but about its disappearance,...

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In the 1960s and 1970s, the USSR began to fear an alliance between Ukrainians and Jews. Therefore, the authorities published works aimed at causing a rift between them—Myroslav Shkandrij

We are continuing our conversation about the image of the Jew and the depictions of the Jewish community in twentieth-century Ukrainian literature. Our guest on the show is Myroslav Shkandrij, a literary historian, art specialist,...

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In her novel “The Books of Jacob”, Olga Tokarczuk portrays the roughly identical fate of all exploited people, regardless of their language and culture—Ostap Slyvynsky

Part 2 of the conversation with the poet, writer, and translator about Olga Tokarczuk's novel The Books of Jacob. In 2020 the Tempora Publishing House issued Ostap Slyvynsky's Ukrainian translation of this novel. Iryna Slavinska:...

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The novel “The Books of Jacob” opens up the real cultural landscape of Podilia, Galicia, and the Subcarpathian regions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—Ostap Slyvynsky

We are talking about The Books of Jacob, by Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The plot of The Books of Jacob unfolds across several borders, and quite a few events take...

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